Should There Be Holidays Without Road Races?

Before he opens presents, goes to church, or sits down with his family for Christmas dinner, Demery Cox will run a 5K with 250 other people through Trinity Park in Fort Worth, Texas.

A longtime competitive runner, Cox is co-director of one of the small but slowly growing number of organized running events that take place on Christmas Day, the last holdout on a calendar of holidays that has become jam-packed with road races.

“We just wanted to give families a chance to run on Christmas,” Cox says.

But putting on a racing bib and dashing through the snow (even if it’s only metaphorical) is not for everyone. And this year’s debate over the mounting number of businesses that opened on Thanksgiving has spread to whether it’s a good idea to allow a proliferation of running events on Christmas.

On the one hand, most Christmas Day race organizers say they’ve gotten mostly positive receptions from merry crowds of runners and volunteers happy to escape their houseguests and the smell of cooking ham or roasting turkey for a while, or who don’t celebrate Christmas and have nothing else to do.

On the other, one of Cox’s board members forgoes his event on principle, preferring to spend the day with her family. The owner of the company that times a longstanding Christmas Day race in Connecticut pulled out because he didn’t want to work on the holiday (though organizers say he reappeared last Christmas). And some Christmas Day races that have started up in the last few years quickly disappeared.

“Before people decide whether to race or not, they need to define for themselves what a successful Christmas Day is for them and for their family,” says Jackson Dunn, director of marriage and family formation at the Christian organization Focus on the Family. “Christmas is one of the most significant, if not the most significant, family days, in addition to being a faith day.”

“For many, I’m sure, that is a way their family bonds,” he says. Others “are not going to even help organize a race on Christmas Day because that is their day for family and faith. They have a clear purpose and mission for Christmas Day. How many of us really do? What I love about this discussion is, it’s making people get real about that question. Deciding whether or not to run a road race is going to force you to define your expectations for the day.”

If runners are voting with their feet, the referendum on Christmas Day events is too close to call.

The oldest continually run Christmas Day race, the 23-year-old Scrooge Scramble 5K in Connecticut, attracts a relatively modest 150 people. The largest, the Christmas Day Joyful 5K on Como Lake in St. Paul, draws more than 800. Cox’s run in Fort Worth is on track to register 250, despite a poor showing of only 50 runners last year—though that was likely due more to unseasonable cold and unaccustomed snow than an aversion to running on the holiday.

But the Fountain Christmas Day Jingle All the Way 5K, which started and ended at a Baptist church in Moss Point, Mississippi, appears to have vanished after one running in 2011; no one at the church or in City Hall could say what happened to it.

A Yuletide 5K in Manhattan Beach, California was held on Christmas Day in 2011—twice, once in the afternoon and once at night—but only because it was the closest weekend day to the winter solstice that year, race director Jeff Atkinson says. This year that run is scheduled for December 21.

And an underground marathon, half marathon, 10K, 5-miler and 5K planned for Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx in 2011 was canceled two weeks before Christmas when the city’s parks department objected; moved hastily to Westchester County, it nonetheless saw 400 runners show up that Christmas Day, many wearing Santa suits and bearing gifts to exchange and toys to give to poor kids, says organizer Michael Oliva. But the event has not been held since.

“We did the race on Christmas because that’s what people wanted,” Oliva says. “Not one person or entity besides the Parks Department objected to holding the race on Christmas Day.”

In fact, for many runners, races can provide escapes from the frenzy of Christmas, says Joyful 5K race director Gary Westlund.

“Holidays are stressful” Westlund says. “And running, for a lot of us, we recognize to be a primary therapy for stress management.”

Atkinson says his Christmas Day edition “had a great turnout and everybody loved it.” He adds, wryly: “Counter-programming is always good.”

Westlund says his main worry when he started the race was not that people would consider it sacrilegious, but that they would think it was too religious, given its name.

“I didn’t want people not observing Christmas as a special day, particularly my Jewish friends, to think that we were doing something overtly religious,” Westlund says. But he says that non-Christian runners have been among the most enthusiastic participants among the giddy runners who defy the Minnesota cold in Santa suits and garish Christmas sweaters.
Because the Joyful 5K is run on park roads, no police or other public employees are required to show up on the holiday, and it’s not timed—though that’s more an attempt to keep people from risking their safety on the icy paths than saving anyone from having to work. Plenty of volunteers turn out, and Westlund photographs the race himself.

When he started the event eight years ago, he says, “My first concern was, if nobody’s doing an event on Christmas Day, there must be a good reason. It was a presumption that people don’t want to run on Christmas morning. But that isn’t true. I’m glad people are finding out that it’s okay.”

Not everyone. Some people would prefer not to work a race on Christmas.

“The number of people staging events on major holidays—Thanksgiving, July 4, Memorial Day—just keeps growing every year,” says Alan Avery, who runs a timing company in Springfield, Illinois. “Something’s got to give. The poor timing community gets fed up and would like to enjoy a holiday with our own families.”

Some races go out of their way to avoid holidays. April’s B.A.A. 5K, usually run on the Sunday before the Boston Marathon, has been moved to Saturday for 2014 to avoid coinciding with Easter. Phil Stewart, director of the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler, says he won’t schedule that event for Easter because, “It seemed like holding it on Easter Sunday would diminish the numbers.” And the London Marathon avoids Easter because, in the U.K., there are holidays on the Friday and Monday on each side of that weekend, causing logistical problems, says spokeswoman Nicola Okey.

Runners can thank the NFL and NBA for the fact that Christmas Day events are even legal in states, including Massachusetts, that ban any business on holidays without a special permit. It’s a loophole that was created to let professional football and basketball games be played, but it’s big enough to run a road race through.

Connecticut’s Scrooge Scramble has giant candy canes as mile markers and hot chocolate for finishers, but no race fee or bib numbers. Runners are encouraged to bring cash, canned goods, clothing, and other items for a homeless shelter, clothing bank, youth center, and soup kitchen where the course begins and ends.

“This is a low-key event. It’s for a good cause. You can see it right there, where [homeless and hungry] people are waiting to come in for Christmas dinner,” says co-director Janit Romayko. “If somebody said they objected [to the event being held on Christmas], I’d say, ‘Don’t come to the run.’"

That’s one solution, says Dunn, of Focus on the Family. “Let’s say you think you hate that people have to work,” he says. “Look them in the eye and say, ‘Thank you, person timing the race, person handing out water, for giving up your day.’ Or if that is reason enough not to go, then don’t. That’s okay.”

He adds, “It’s easy for us to just want to throw stones. But what if that family is saying, ‘No, this is the best family day we’ve ever had.’ Then for race organizers, may there be grace extended to them for sticking to their convictions.”

Cox, in Fort Worth, predicts more Christmas Day races. “It’s just like turkey trots,” he says. “Years ago, there was maybe one turkey trot in any major city. Now there are a lot of those.”

While they prepare for this Christmas, Romayko and her fellow organizers from the Silk City Striders are also already planning a follow up event: a 2.5-mile trail run.

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